


THE CASE OF THE NOT SO SECRET VALENTINE

by Maggie1967



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Genre: Eventual Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are Parents, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson in Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 14:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie1967/pseuds/Maggie1967
Summary: It's Valentine's day and John receives a card.Who could it be from?





	THE CASE OF THE NOT SO SECRET VALENTINE

THE CASE OF THE NOT SO SECRET VALENTINE

February 19th, 2019

Haven’t written in my blog for a while but I felt like now was a good time to start it up again. You see, the strangest thing happened to me.I received a Valentine’s card in the post six days ago. A Valentine’s card from my three year old daughter. A Valentine’s card in a red envelope. It had little love heart stickers dotted all over it and pink glitter spelling out my name.Now Rosie’s pretty smart ( for a three year old). Even Sherlock thinks she has masses of potential. He tells me that all the time. However, she still hasn’t mastered the art of formally posting a letter. She also doesn’t usually address me as John. Someone therefore had to have helped her to make and post the Valentine’s card in question. The list of suspects for me to choose from was very limited.

Mrs Hudson  
Molly  
Greg  
Sherlock

The Pope  
The Queen  
Mycroft…

This is the order I questioned them in. Just joking….I never bothered asking Mycroft.

Every one of the real suspects provided good reasons/alibis as to why it wasn’t them. All except one.

Can you guess which one?

When I got round to questioning suspect number four, he ( like the rest of them) was adamant that it simply wasn’t him. He casually suggested that it must have been ‘Hudders’ and she’d just forgotten in her old age. Well, he actually blamed something else entirely but I don’t want to repeat that here! Let’s just say he blamed her pressure point and leave it at that! Anyway, after Sherlock started frantically finger pointing in everyone else’s direction, I knew for definite that it was him.So I lied to him.I lied to the worlds only consulting detective and he fell for it hook, line and sinker. I told him that I had Greg (Lestrade) run the card for fingerprints. His face! His actual face when I said that! He actually asked me if Rosie’s finger prints were in the police system! When I started laughing he didn’t join in. He was being serious.

When I think about it, I don’t know why I asked the others first. It should have been obvious who helped Rosie from the moment the postman handed me the card. Sherlock’s always doing arts and crafts with her. He secretly loves glitter. Mrs Hudson is forever moaning about the amounts of glitter being sucked up into the good Hoover. Sometimes I’ll get in after a long hard shift at the surgery and when I enter Baker Street, there they are, my daughter and the ‘mad man’, lying there on the sofa, sprawled out, their exhausted sleeping faces caked in all the sparkling colours of the rainbow.

The last time Rosie and Sherlock had the paints out, Mycroft had shown up unexpectedly. Rosie accidentally tipped a red paint pot over his fancy shoes and Sherlock gave her a biscuit as a reward. When Rosie toddled over to Mycroft with the splatter painting she had made and offered it to him ( her version of a sincere apology) Sherlock just glared at him until Mycroft reluctantly accepted it. Sherlock took his hesitation as a personal insult to my daughter’s artistic abilities. God help Rosie’s future teachers! I could only laugh as Sherlock demanded that his brother leave, whilst mumbling something under his breath about the painting being better than some of the pretentious rubbish Mycroft had on his walls at home. Funny because it’s actually true!

Anyway, you might still be wondering what happened after my finger print lie forced a confession from Sherlock.He was affronted about the whole situation obviously. Couldn’t look me in the eye. I was (admittedly) being quite wicked about the whole thing.I really enjoyed making him squirm. However, as he gradually became more uncomfortable, I almost felt bad…almost…

I asked him why he had written John on the front of the card. He looked at me with utter confusion before stating that it was in actual fact my name and what else would he possibly have put.When I reminded him that Rosie’s name for me is dad, he looked even more affronted.When I questioned him on his use of pink glitter he became incredulous.These were his actual words…direct quote……

“Really, John! Can you give your daughter no credit for this situation? It was the colour she chose when I asked her to pick one for you. She also helped me sprinkle it. If you don’t believe me then have Gavin dust the glitter tube for fingerprints.Surely, as my willing accomplice, Rosie must take her share of the blame in this!I don’t know why this has grown into such a big issue.Why this card annoys you so much. It was meant to make you smile. You have been so sad recently and I concluded it was because you missed having companionship in your life, as you stopped dating after Mary and it’s been three years.I researched this extensively before deciding on the best course of action.A card on an occasion like this, from ones child, is meant to make the recipient feel valued, appreciated and loved.It is not meant to make them launch a full scale inquiry!Does it disturb you because I made an error and wrote John?I’m sorry for the Freudian slip but perhaps I was trying to remind you that Rosie is not the only person left on this earth that deeply loves and values you.”

Amazing that he can remember what he says word for word really,otherwise I couldn’t have put this in the blog. I was too busy having a complete moment of clarity/internal crisis , to pay full attention to what he was saying.There he was, standing there pleading his case like an accused would to the jury, and all I could think about was that he had just admitted how much he loved and valued me.

It worried me that he actually thought I was viewing the whole situation negatively. He couldn’t see how absolutely moved I was that he’d taken the time to help my daughter do something like that for me. Nobody else had even thought of doing that. For all of their goodness, friendship and humanity, not one of my other friends realised that I was getting to a point were I actually needed to be reminded that I was loved. Not one person except Sherlock Holmes understood that.

Sherlock was standing there giving his big drama queen spiel and all I could think about, was if he knew exactly how much he was loved and valued. Did he know that everything he had done ( particularly in the last three years) was appreciated. The man who stayed up all night and shot holes in the wall, was now ( mostly) going to bed at reasonable hours so he could get up and give Rosie her breakfast in the morning if I had to work a nightshift. The man who had eyeballs in his fridge and forensic slides everywhere, suddenly had spaces full of stuffed toys in his living room and he had willingly put them there.The man who would spend hours on his science of deduction website was now cutting it short to watch YouTube videos about sewing, cooking and how to do braiding, buns and French plaits.I suddenly, in that moment, needed him to know how much he was appreciated for all of that. The only problem with that plan was that there was no time to find the pink glitter and Rosie was down for her afternoon nap. So I had to improvise. I had been moving steadily closer to him during his rant and was mere inches from him when insanity finally took over.

I kissed him.

My lips merged with his, my arms wrapped around his back and I clung on for dear life, fearing that this would be the one and only time I would be permitted to completely open myself up and to show this man exactly what he meant to me. To show him the depth of feeling that he could stir in me at the most unexpected of moments.

As the lustful haze from my wreck less decision cleared, and just before the guilt of my actions began to form, I fully expected to be pushed away and reprimanded for selfishly violating him and his trust.I expected to be looked at indifferently and told in no uncertain terms that he was still married to his work. I did not expect his hands to find their way to my neck, or his tongue to be the one to push itself into my mouth. I imagined the noises from him to be protests rather than the guttural and raw moans of my name filling my ears in bursts of pink glitter. I never expected his body to be completely receptive to my touch and willing to press itself so intimately and tightly against my own. I expected it to be over in 30 seconds, not reaching well over five minutes of nervous fumbling and slow caresses.

When we finally did manage to prise ourselves apart, the room was filled with stunned silence. Neither of us had saw this coming. We spent a good five mins just catching our breaths and staring at one another, trying to work out how we had ended up at this point. It was Sherlock who broke the silence first. He started laughing.He was laughing the way he had done in our very first night together. It felt surreal.It wasn’t the time for laughing, not really.We were the dearest of friends. Our lives together and what we did with them mattered to a great many people. We had just decided to gamble with those lives and things weren’t ever going to be the same again. How could they be? No matter how much we would try and convince ourselves, we had just drew a very final line under the last ten years. What happened from now on would be a new beginning. It had to be. I didn’t feel like laughing was the appropriate response to that. Confusion and being scared shitless was the appropriate response to that. However, Sherlock’s laughter filled the room around us.It was infectious.I began to laugh as well.It was ridiculous.We should have been talking.We should have been working through what just happened.Instead we were standing in the kitchen of 221B Baker Street laughing our heads off.We had nearly ripped the clothes from each other’s backs, that how passionate we had gotten only ten mins before, and now we were standing at a distance with our laughs mingling in the air between us.

We didn’t have the talk that night.

Mrs Hudson appeared to tell us that Lestrade had tried to phone several times but there was no answer. That’s when the laughing quickly stopped. The game was on. We could never discuss this whilst the game was on.

Two days later and the case was solved.We still hadn’t talked about what happened in our kitchen.I went straight to the clinic after we left the crime scene and Sherlock agreed to go home and see to Rosie.It was a further 16 hours before I entered Baker Street again.

A similar and comforting sight met me when I emerged from the entrance of the flat into the living room.There was Sherlock lying sprawled on the couch, cradling Rosie in his arms.Face full of glitter.Faint scratch on his neck from were I had clawed a bit too possessively two nights before. The scene felt normal and abnormal all at the same time.

I made my way into the kitchen and was met with a tea tray of biscuits, a vase with a single red rose and a red envelope with dad/John written on it.Intrigued, I opened it and this is what was inside…

Dear Dad,

Sherlock helped me to make the last card because he felt that it was very important that you know how much I love and appreciate you. I think that you are the most wonderful father and that you have a very fetching name.Thats why I asked him to help me sprinkle it in pink glitter on the card.  
However, this card is not from me. I am just helping Sherlock write it because he’s useless with feelings. After discussing it with him, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is completely in love with you. Has been for years.He was just too scared to admit it to himself up until now.He wants to spend the rest of his life with you. He doesn’t want to waste anymore time. He knows this changes everything and he’s glad of it.Quite frankly ( if you want my opinion and Hudders opinion regarding this situation) you’ve been living with one another for years anyway, so you both might as well get some sex from this situation. What do you say?

Love Rosie x

P.s if you agree to this then come into the living room and wake Sherlock up with a kiss.

I started laughing again.I started laughing again and then I kissed him.

Why have I bothered to tell you all this? It’s not a real case after all.So why have I chosen this very intimate story about our lives together, to be the first thing I’ve blogged about for years? Well, It’s because I think it’s about time that the world knew the secret that’s been kept for a very long time. The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.  
Sherlock Holmes is so much more than the legend that’s been built up around him by myself and the media.The Valentine’s story is a symbol of who he really is.The heart as well as the brain. Not a freak, not a sociopath. Sherlock Holmes is the man who commands the whole of Scotland Yard one moment and then covers himself in pink glitter the next, all because my daughter demands it. Sherlock Holmes is the man who prides himself on being the smartest person in the room, but will mortify himself at the drop of a hat, all to show me that I am loved.

That’s who he really is.

I am so grateful that is who he really is.

I love him because that is who he really is.

—————————————————————————————-

“What do you think?

Sherlock had been perched on the seat next to John the whole time he was reading his blogger’s newest creation. The only indication of how affected he was came from the roughness of his voice when he finally decided to reply.

“Thank you John.Thank you.Though always remember that I would be nothing without my blogger.”

Sherlock bent down and kissed John on the head before deciding to speak again.

“You know you can’t actually post it though, don’t you.”

John shut the laptop over and sat it next to them on the couch.He turned to Sherlock and worryingly pulled the younger man’s hand into his own.

“Why not?”

Sherlock began to slowly run his fingers up and down John’s wrist as he traced circles on his skin.It reminded him of all the times previously that their hands had touched.In friendship, tragedy, anger and love. He was eventually pulled out of his thoughts by the soldier who was nervously licking his lips whilst impatiently staring at him.  
“Mary was right, John .Who we really are, doesn’t matter. Not to them.Not to the ones outside Baker Street that read about our cases and sit in our client’s chairs.The only people it matters to are us, our friends and our Rosie.What you have just written is truly wonderful to me but …”

“it’s private…”

“Yes, John…”

“Okay, Sherlock. Okay.I won’t publish it.”

John lifted his laptop, opened the tab and began typing a sentence before clicking a button on the computer that allowed the draft copy of his blog to start printing. It was now Sherlock’s turn to wait patiently for John to explain what he was doing.

“Before I delete it from existence, I’m firstly going to print it out, frame it and put it in our bedroom. For our eyes only.It’s my valentine’s gift to you.”

Sherlock excitedly pulled the paper from the printer and couldn’t help but notice an obvious change to the piece that he had read only moments before.

“You changed the title, John”

“Yes. Seemed more fitting.”

“The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.That might be your best case title yet, John!”

John grabbed Sherlock by the hand and began leading him towards their bedroom.

“Let’s go pick a spot for this.”

“Could take a while, Doctor Watson.There are a few positions I would like to test out

‘Oh,believe me, I’m counting on that, Mr.Holmes.”


End file.
